Once
again our beloved Rockaway has sustained yet another tragedy. This
morning, November 12, American Airlines Flight 587 bound for the
Dominican Republic crashed into Rockaway at around 129th Street.
Many homes are still burning as I write these words. Those of us
who have had to endure such heavy hearts over the recent loss of life on
September 11th, are once again shaken by this unbelievable event.
Carol and I pray for our Rockaway families who are involved and for those
on the plane who lost their lives.

Below are notes I have received
and the CNN story of a few moments ago. Also I received this note
from a producer of the Today Show and another from someone at Reuters News
Service and now a third from a journalist in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland.

"It's Mary Ann Zoellner.
I'm a producer at the Today Show. Please if you are there call me
at 212-664-5239 or 917-796-1566 or email me your number. We
are looking for an eyewitness of the crash

Thank you.

Mary Ann Zoellner
Email address: MaryAnn.Zoellner@nbc.com

Hi:I am a reporter in desparate
need of help. I found your page on the Internet and would really appreciate
it if you can put me in touch with a Rockaway's real estate broker's cell
phone ASAP -- we're trying to learn as much as we can about today's tragic
plane crash -- including who owned the buildings hit by the plane.

I am a freelance journalist in Newfoundland, Canada interested in
talking to any eyewitnesses of today's terrible plane crash.Please contact me if you know of anyone who may be willing to talk
to me.

Regards,

Danette DooleyMount Pearl, NewfoundlandCanada709 368 0914

Hi,

I am a journalist from Melbourne
in Australia. I am doing a story on today's tragedy in Rockaway.
Is there any way I could call you this evening to discuss what has happened?
Please e-mail me with your number if this is possible.

Leela de KretserHerald Sun+61 3 9292 1955

As
you know, our sweet homeland was hard hit by today's tragic plane crash.
Belle Harbor lost so many people on September 11, and now this. I am uploading
a portrait of St. Francis De Sales, the church on Rockaway BeachBlvd and B.129th. Many firemen, police and WTC workers who
died int he WTC had their funerals there. Today the space is being used
as a morgue. Far Rockaway High School has so many alumni, I wondered if
we couldn't all pray together, in whatever faith, for a healing.

Best to you,

Donna Gaines (1968)

Hello,

Everyone here in Rockaway Beach, Oregon wanted to extend our heartfelt
sympathy to all of you, first over the Sept. 11 attack, and also now the
plane crash that took place. Please know that you are all in our hearts
andminds.

We have always wanted to contact someone there to see about making
your Rockaway Beach our sister city. We have a great little city here,
right on the beach. Our website count increased dramatically the day of,
and the dayafter, the crash, we know it was due to people searching for your
Rockaway Beach.

We hope that you will have some time to visit our website at www.rockawaybeach.net
and learn more about us. In the meantime you are in our prayers.

As you have already heard, our "home" has sustained another blow.
When I first heard about this, I was just checking my mail. Trying to get
back to "normal" as "they" said we should. The first image that I
thought of was that of the plane slicing through Bayswater. After
all, at the end of Healy Avenue is Jamaica Bay and about 1/2 mile to a
mile is Kennedy. When I found out it was in Belle Harbor, I was relieved
and saddened at the same time. These two emotions have been juxtapositioned
more than once since 9-11. Relieved that Bayswater was not hit but
shocked, horrified, and saddened that Belle Harbor was. I only hope
that no one that we knew was a victim today and my deepest sorrow goes
out to the victims in the air and on the ground today.

Oh when will this nightmare end? Just when New York is stirring
from the assault in September, this happens. The politicians say
we will survive. We are tough and resourceful but they go back to
their safe homes and deal with politics and make their speeches. The rest
of us must look world through eyes that see the world as a physical, therefore
real world. Whereas they see it through the political and surreal
eyes of those who use reality for political mileage. At another time
I will comment on the former statement, as for now let it stand on it's
own merits.

We will get through this but not with the powers that be but in spite
of them.

Take care,

Howard Klein, 1969

Bit of a shock on the 12th- My cousin that also grew up with me-class
of 72-Martha Hochberger lives on 139th and Beach Channel Drive--obviously
did not get hit- but felt the impact in her house- said that the house
was catapulted off her foundation- -

Other people that still live there that I know -includes Joel Hamburger-
Class of 63 or 64 I live near Ray Horowitz- Class of 63- and we spoke-
his house that he grew up in is gone-It's such a horrible horrible feeling-being
so far away-and having your childhood's memories disheveled- and worse....I'm
devastated about it- How can this happen to my hometown?

Do you know my brother- Arthur Schwartz- class of 62?-His picture
is on the web- Bobby Hoffman took it.I still keep up with many of my own classmates and those in the
class of 66.-Sherill Langsam Cavaliere(66), Rory Cavalier(64), Judy Apfelbaum
Karp(67), Mal Apfelbaum Klueger(66), Vicki Mehl(66), Arlene Solomon(66)
Lynn Zucker Rosenblatt(66), Jeannie Schwartz(66), Susan Cohen Strange(67),
Sandy Hirsch Wescott(67)

The 100th year Reunion you folks organized was a major highlight
in my life-It brought back so many memories and good feelings- and supported
all that I've remembered and dreamed of. Your web site and the time and
effort that you have put in it- You and Carol Marston-has also been absolutely
wonderful- and have made a big difference and major in my life-I look forward
to going on-line and hearing from people that I really liked and lost contact
with. You can never replace your childhood friends or memories.Thank you
for all of your efforts, time, devotion and all and all hard work that
you've put in- you really have made a difference in my life and I am sure
in many other people's as well.

Thanks so much for your kind words about the Rockaway website.
Carol and I will take all the credit for it but just know that it is a
labor of love and has become our mission. Also worth noting is that
without the wonderful contributions of 'stuff' from all of our viewers,
the pages would be empty. As for the 100th Anniversary Reunion, we attended
but were not involved in the organization of it. Our contribution
was just spreading the word through our websites which reached a lot of
people. The organization was done by the 'old' alumni association
which has since disappeared from sight!

The recent crash of the airbus in your neighborhood has saddened
all of us here. We feel that you have endured so much already that
this is just too much. Our hearts and prayers go out to you.Very truly,

Fred Jinkins Houston, Texas

Wow - I am still devastated as well as in a state of shock! This
is very unfortunate and sad. I used to work on 113th Street at St Johns
Home for Boys which was only a few blocks away from this tragic event.
I've planned a trip home for Thanksgiving next week. I'll be leaving
from Atlanta to come home. Nevertheless nothing will stop me from coming
home to Far Rockaway. If there is anything I can do to help my fellow
residents, please let me know.

Thanks

Bernard K. BlackmonNDCHEALTHBERNARD.BLACKMON@NDCHEALTH.COM

Dear Skip and Carol,

I'm devastated for the people of the Rockaways. I grew up on
133rd Street between Newport and Cronston, went to and graduated from P.S.
114 and can't believe that this could happen to my "home". All the
years in Belle Harbor whether it was working at my mother and dad's store,
Estelle's Shoes or being married to Chet Maskin of Maskin's Mens Shop on
116th Street, were bliss. My kids only know of the quality of life,
the warmth of the people in that area. My daughter was born in Rockaway
Beach Hospital, my son in Peninsula Hospital Center. All these memories
are brought into the reality that this tiny peninsula of approximately
200,000 people are my family and will always be. The disaster on
September 11th certainly took its toll on these wonderful people and now
with this new trauma, I can only sympathize with the community I loved
so much. I hope that there will be no more sorrow for this long standing,
God loving peninsula, rich in values, modest in their life style and profoundly
beautiful. My heart is broken.

Love

Vivian (Gertzkis) Maskin 1956

Please read the article written about the crash in the Miami Herald
today. You can get it on their web site (I dont know how to forward
it). My brother Marty Silverberg (Class of '73) knows one of
the reporters and told them the following story which they included in
their article.

Mike Moran, a Rockaway Beach man who lost his brother and 12
friends who were firefighters on Sept. 11, announced to the whole world,
on the Oct. 20th fundraiser (Paul MaCartney's), that Osama Bin Ladan should
kiss his Irish backside, and that he should come and get him in Rockaway
Beach.

Is this just a cooincidence? Hopefully thats all it is, but
its very scary.

Sincerely,

Lisa Silverberg (Class of '69)

We may be upstate, but we are all in the same family "New York"
We here in the small Village Of Montour Falls, NY send you our prayers
and our love. It seems like you people are receiving the ultimate
test. Not a day goes by that I don't remind people, at least
for now, we don';t have any problems! I remind them of New York City, Washington
DC and Pa. Our thoughts are with you.

Jack Cleary, Mayor

I'm still reeling from the sight of the flaming wreckage. My
son-in-law called to alert me to the news and my first words to him were
"that's my home." That shocked even me who has lived elsewhere for
42 years. This is just a note to thank you again for all you have
done to preserve that "home" for the rest of us and all you've done to
support the Rockaways during this time of trial. God Bless.

Patricia Feller

Thank you for the information
you posted about the plane that crashed on November 12. I lived in
a house on 132nd and Newport Avenue and got chills when I heard about the
location of the crash. The sand of the Rockaways never leaves your shoes.

Barry Kaplan 1965Hollywood, FL

Have some chicken soup and get well soon

How wonderful it would be if this would help solve the problems for
'our' Rockaway! Catching the news this morning in California made me leap
out of bed and turn on the TV. I thought it can't be - not again
- I used to live on that street, and no Katie Couric it is not Far Rockaway
and all the streets running North and South are called Beach! But
talking back to the news didn't make it any less real! I called my
sister in New Mexico so she could tune in too. Was and is fate playing
havoc with a small bedroom community that up until this year was hardlyknown? But I suppose that's like saying, Why Me Dear G-d?
May the words of my mouth and the tears in my heart reach those in need
and may we say, no more!

Carol Werfel (55)

Hi Skip,

Don't know if you have heard yet,
but an AA airbus crashed this morning in Rockaway. (129-133rd St &
Newport Ave) 4 homes are badly damaged, others are burning, too.
Part of the engine fell onto the ground at an area gasstation. FBI beleives that
there was an explosion on board, before the crash. It is not know
if this was due to mechanical failure or sabotage. I am hearing that 15
individuals were brought to Peninsula Hospital. They are being treated
for minor injuries and smoke inhalation. These people were from the
neighborhood....

Sincerely,

Ethel Wagner ('62)

Carol & Skip,

Thanks for updating the website for all of us. Very chilling news.
Pray that all is well, 'back home'. Take care, and again, thanks for all
your effort and meticulous work.

Sandra Westcott '67 (in Arizona)

Thanks for putting up the latest info on our web page. I live in
Palo Alto, California and saw the horror on television. Frightening
& Tragic

Condolences and my heartfelt sympathy.

Linda KaplanFRHS class of 1960Rainbow

CNN Coverage of
the Crash

NEW YORK (CNN) -- For residents
near the beaches of New York's borough of Queens, a quiet Veterans Day
holiday brought a fresh beaches of New York's borough of Queens, a quiet
Veterans Day holiday brought a fresh taste of catastrophe Monday.

Numerous residents, many with
children home for the day, saw American Airlines Flight 587 catch fire
and plunge to earth Monday morning. Black smoke billowed over the neighborhood
from the crash scene and from at least three other sites, where flaming
debris caused other fires.

More than 40 fire trucks and 200-plus
firefighters were dispatched to the scene.

The neighborhood is home to numerous
New York firefighters, who took heavy losses in the September 11 attack
on the World Trade Center. Several other neighborhood residents worked
at Cantor Fitzgerald, a bond-trading firm decimated in the twin towers'
collapse.

"The Rockaway community was hit
hard between the firefighters and civilians who were lost at the World
Trade Center," said Chief Jimmy Trudden of the Broad Channel Volunteer
Fire Department. "For this to happen in this neighborhood, it's tragic.
I can't put it into words."

Witnesses said they saw an explosion
on one side of the plane before the crash, but different accounts placed
the explosion on different sides of the aircraft. Ethan Moses said he saw
the aircraft burning from its left side, then the aircraft's left engine
fell off.

"It tilted to the left slightly
and it made a nosedive, straight down," Moses said.

Firefighters said one of the Airbus
A300's two engines fell off, crashing into a house and setting it on fire.

Another woman described the neighborhood
around the crash site as a scene of "complete and utter terror. Everybody
is so distraught and upset and in shock," she said.

When the plane approached, "I
thought it was like the Concorde and it was flying too low," she said.
"Then it hit. It was like a bomb exploded."

The crash occurred about five
miles from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the
jet had just taken off for the Dominican Republic's capital Santo Domingo.

Since the September 11 terrorist
attacks, U.S. warplanes have patrolled the airspace around New York. Susan
Locke, who lives about five blocks away, said she thought the noise at
first was a fighter jet.

"I looked out the window and saw
a plane nose-dive, straight down," she said.

Phyllis Paul, who lives near the
crash site, said a "big, silvery piece of metal" fell behind her house
before the plane went down. Paul, who was eating breakfast when she heard
the plane, got her 10-year-old son and got out of the house.

"I was sitting having breakfast
and I heard the engines very loud," she said. "They were loud and low,
and because of what happened September 11, it gave me a chill."

Left Reeling After
the Sept. 11 Attacks,A Queens Enclave
Watches the Sky Fall

By BARRY NEWMAN and JARED SANDBERGStaff Reporters of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL

BELLE HARBOR, New York -- Residents
here can't be blamed for wondering: How many bad things can happen to a
good neighborhood?

Home to large numbers of firefighters,
emergency workers and money men, this enclave of the Rockaway section of
Queens found itself host to scores of funerals after terrorists commandeering
two commercial jetliners brought down the Twin Towers on Sept. 11.

Then, Monday morning, an American
Airlines Airbus 300 fell out of the sky right on top of Belle Harbor, destroying
four houses and damaging at least 16 others. Even if terrorism seemed to
be fading as a cause of the crash, terror continued to reverberate in the
neighborhood hours after the heavily loaded Airbus hit the ground.

Shell-shocked mothers ran from
houses, clutching crying children. Sirens wailed and firemen and rescue
workers frantically combed burning rubble for survivors, as the air filled
with the acrid smell of jet fuel.

Daniel Buckley, a sandy-haired
seven-year-old who lives three blocks from the crash site, was finishing
a picture he was drawing of the World Trade Center when he saw the plane
go down outside his window. "I was writing 'Gone but not forgotten'," he
said. "But I didn't have time to write 'forgotten'."

Like a lot of people near the
impact zone, he ran for his life. The crash killed all 251 aboard the plane
but, given the ferocity of impact, casualties on the ground seemed remarkably
light. As many as nine were unaccounted for, and about 35 people were treated
at nearby hospitals, most of them for smoke inhalation.

But emotionally shattered people,
still coping with Sept. 11, were everywhere.

"The houses were shaking. I thought
I was going to die," says Frances Samon, a 29-year-old mother of three
who, hearing the roaring plane struggling overhead, grabbed her kids and
dog and started running. Ms. Samon says she was already on antianxiety
medication as a result of World Trade Center attack.

The Belle Harbor section of Rockaway
is a cluster of mostly modest single-family homes with neat front lawns
and side-by-side back yards in the center of the Rockaway Peninsula, a
narrow 11-mile spit of sand that extends into Jamaica Bay from the Nassau
County border on Long Island. Belle Harbor is in Queens -- New York City's
most ethnically diverse borough -- but Belle Harbor is not of Queens. A
beach-front time-capsule for unassuming middle-class families, mostly Irish
and Jewish, it had changed hardly at all in 50 years.

Sept. 11, however, brought deep
emotional wounds: Over 50 families lost relatives, residents say, people
who either worked in the World Trade Center or were members of the emergency
services.

Monday, the wounds were physical.
The Airbus 300 slammed down in a roar of flame and chaos near the corner
of 131st Street and Newport Avenue, engulfing houses and narrowly sparing
a neighborhood landmark, the Harbor Light, a bar that has stood in the
same place for decades. Its owner, Bernie Heeran, is a former firefighter
whose son Charlie worked for the bond firm Cantor Fitzgerald and died in
the World Trade Center attacks. Another employee of the bar, residents
said, was a fireman who was also killed on Sept. 11.

One block south, on 129th St.,
closer to the beach, is St. Francis de Sales, the orange-brick church at
the center of Roman Catholic life in the neighborhood -- and where many
of the World Trade Center funerals have been held.

Just east of 130th Street, on
a one-block stretch of 129th St., is a commercial street that keeps its
offseason feel in the middle of summer. It's the kind of street where men
sit out in on the sidewalk on folding beach chairs, not saying much. There's
a bakery, a grocery, a pizza place, a drug store, a bar, a candy store,
and a new Chinese take-out called "East Meets West." There is a gas station,
too.

Monday, a flaming Airbus engine
landed near its gas pumps.

Marilyn Kramberg, a real-estate
broker, was in her home five short blocks from 129th St. when it happened.

"There was a tremendous amount
of noise," she said. "I said, 'Oops, there goes the Concorde again.' "
My husband started yelling, 'There's a plane going down!" We didn't hear
a crash. But then smoke started rising, great billows of smoke. There were
a lot of people on the street -- which is unusual."

"This community was very badly
hit by the World Trade Center thing," said his wife. "I knew most of the
families, even if I didn't know the young men who were killed. They had
funerals every day at St. Francis. They're still having them. It was just
an awful, awful, awful thing. There have been plane accidents over the
years -- one crashed into the bay a few years ago. It's not always terrorists.
But we'll find out -- I guess."

A Rich History

In the 19th century, Rockaway
was a posh summer resort for New York's wealthy, akin to Saratoga Springs
in upstate New York. The rich lived in mansions on the beach. A ferry from
Brooklyn was their only way across Jamaica bay until a railroad trestle
was built in the 1870s. But by the turn of the century, the rich were already
heading out to the Hamptons on Long Island. Rockaway became a summer refuge
for the sweltering working class. The mansions were broken up into rooming
houses. Colonies of matchbox bungalows crowded in.

Shortly after World War II, fire
destroyed the train trestle. The Long Island Railroad abandoned it and
the New York subway took over. The travel time to Manhattan was tripled.
Rockaway's heyday was over. By the 1960s, most of the mansions and bungalows
fell to urban renewal. Long stretches of beachfront were left fallow, and
are still fallow today. No development scheme could overcome the billions
it would cost to build a high-speed rail link to the beach.

Before the war, there was a golf
course called Idlewild in the marshes across the bay. It became an airport
in 1942, and by the 1960s, when it was renamed for John F. Kennedy, it
was a very big airport. Jet planes screaming overhead on summer nights
brought lulls to front-porch conversations. It didn't help real-estate
values.

Rockaway, so the joke went, became
"the last resort," a repository for the harmless homeless who continue
to live in a few broken-down single-room-occupancy hotels. Woody Allen
used its quirkily tawdry streets in his movie, "Radio Days." The Ramones
wrote a song about it. When Rockaway gets a mention in New York nostalgia
writing, it is often called a "mythic" place.

But Belle Harbor, the 25-block
stretch of where Monday's crash took place, was spared from decline. With
help from some powerful New York politicians who still summered there --
including former Mayor Abraham Beame -- zoning rules have limited development
to single-family houses. The population in its ZIP code is frozen at about
20,000. In summer, parking is banned on weekends. Except for the areas
near the subway stop and in Jacob Riis Park at the peninsula's West End,
access to the beach is difficult for anyone who doesn't know someone with
a driveway. In its way, this part of Rockaway, at least, is as exclusive
as ever.

As the cost of vacations goes
up, an occasional adventurer will rent one of Rockaway's few remaining
bungalows for the summer. In the weeks since Sept. 11, articles have appeared
in the local press suggesting that Rockaway might come into its own again.
A family home sells for under $400,000. By car, Wall Street is 40-minutes
away. It was, some began to believe, a modest refuge from the uncertainties
of big-city life.

Now, like the witnesses to the
World Trade Center attacks, Rockaway residents, used to their perch five
miles from Kennedy Airport, have acquired indelible memories of an awful
event. Eyewitnesses, many of them mothers and children home from school
because of the holiday, said they could tell by the sound that the jet
was in trouble. They heard the Airbus overhead, its engines turning on
and off and the plane dipping and rising as it struggled over Jamaica Bay.
One engine fell off the right side of the plane. Then the tail of the jet
blew up, flames streaming from its belly.

"I've never seen anything like
that in my life," said Katherine Lauth, a nurses assistant from the Rockaways,
who was heading back to her home to check on her 20-year-old son. "I just
started jumping up and down screaming."

"I'm cold from top to bottom,"
adds Paula Berndt, the owner of the Harbor Bake Shop on nearby Beach 116th
Street. Ms. Berndt said she was just beginning her holiday baking, which
includes making 2000 pies for Thanksgiving. But as the smoke and sirens
drifted around her bake shop, Ms. Berndt said she would probably cut back
the number, as the neighborhood entered another round of mourning. "It's
so unpredictable. We don't know anything anymore."